Yes, there is no doubt that this new addition or extension of your marketing team will do keyword research, set up your account structure, build out ad copy, adjust bids, test landing pages, and track conversion/goals with an ROI or CPA. But, even novice PPC managers know that PPC management goes deeper than adjusting bids or split testing ad copy.

Here are a few questions your PPC manager should be asking you.

What are your current business objectives?

I typically like to start with this question because it helps me get a sense of what their current business goals are, and where they want to take their organization over the next 12 months. If you can get your client to share their business objectives for the year, it can help you to develop their PPC strategy.

In addition to helping you craft your PPC strategy, this question also gives you a chance to ask how they measure goals internally. What cost per conversion targets do they have? What is their target return on investments?

Expect some push back from the client when asking these questions. If you experience some push back, explain to the client why it’s important to know what their business goals are and how it’s going to help you develop your strategy.

What are you looking to get from PPC advertising?

The second question I like to ask is, what are you looking to gain from PPC advertising? Are you looking to drive more sales? Leads? White paper downloads? By asking this question, you will find out whether or not your client has any predetermined goals set already.

This question will also give you the opportunity to uncover any unrealistic ideas your client may have. Sometimes clients get excited about their potential results that they come out of the gate with unrealistic goals. Don’t be afraid to “pop” that balloon.

What are your PPC goals?

Once the client has shared their business goals and what they are expecting to see from PPC with me, I asked them what their specific PPC goals are. A PPC campaign without goals is like traveling to a new city without a map. How can you expect to build a successful PPC campaign without identifying goals?

If your client sells products online, your goal(s) should be to drive more sales at a lower CPA and a higher ROI. If your client is lead gen, your goal should be to drive more leads to your client’s website. Either way, you should set PPC goals to help you gauge the success of your PPC initiatives.

What is your desired ROI or CPA?

After the PPC goals have been established, I typically like to ask the client if they have a target ROI or CPA in mind. Establishing a target ROI and CPA will help you gauge the success of your campaigns on metrics other than CPC or average position. Don’t get me wrong, CPC and average position metrics are important, but you cannot solely manage a PPC campaigns on those metrics alone. The additional metrics will help you determine in which ad position your keywords convert best.

Is there any Geo-Targeting?

The next question I like to ask is whether or not there is any geo-targeting that needs to be implemented. I like to ask this question because when you work with mid-size business, a few of them like to advertise locally or regionally. So, it’s important to figure out your geo-targeting to ensure you are driving relevant and qualified clicks and not unqualified clicks.

Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful and versatile tool that works just as well on a small mom and pop site as it does on a massive ecommerce site. It is often disregarded because of the assumption that free = junk, which is a massive mistake.

Those who do utilize this incredible resource, however, oftentimes only make use of 5-10% of its capabilities (Source: My head). A lot of top-level users simply look at total traffic, maybe some traffic sources and if they even have it configured, Goal reports.

While there are countless ways you can segment, filter and customize your reports, there are three main areas where all-too-many users glaze over. 

Top Conversion Paths

Find It: Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Top Conversion Paths

A common mistake is simply looking at Goal reports, then only looking at the sources to see where these converting users are coming from.

One thing you need to keep in mind is that a single user doesn’t always visit your site through a single source. Sometimes, a user might first be exposed to your site after clicking on a PPC ad, then searching you in Google, then a 3rd direct visit now that they know your URL by heart. If they convert, which source gets the credit? Paid Search? Organic search? Direct traffic?

Google Analytics uses what is called a last click attribution model, which means that they give credit to whichever source was the last to bring the user to the site before they converted. By viewing your Top Conversion Paths, you can see how all of your traffic sources work together to drive a conversion, because like any sales cycle, it often takes more than one impression with a customer to “convert” them.

Social Reports

Find It: Traffic Sources > Social

A common complaint among social media pessimists is that you can’t track the value of your social media efforts and you’re essentially “flying blind.” That is an outdated and unfortunate point of view because Google Analytics has come a long way in reporting the value of social media.

Your Social reporting includes an Overview and reports for Network Referrals, Data Hub Activity, Landing Pages, Trackbacks, Conversions, Plugins and a Visitors Flow.

With these wide-ranging reports, you can can an excellent view of which social media outlets are sending traffic, which ones send qualified traffic and where they convert.

Real-Time

The Real-Time reporting is the first item beneath your Standard Reports. Until recently, Real-Time was in beta and includes a couple reports that are in beta still. At first glance, it looks like nothing more than an area you can oversee your users as they traverse your site, however this section can be incredibly valuable for content marketing.

When you have a piece of high quality content you’re about to release—if all goes according to plan—you’ll be getting traffic from all sorts of referring sites and social media outlets. With Real-Time analytics pulled up as your command center, you can monitor in real-time where significant traffic is coming from and where conversations about your content could be popping up where you can go and respond and contribute. By doing so, you can get more conversations going and build more buzz around your content.

If you haven’t taken the time to fully explore Google Analytics, you’re missing out (there is no “could be” about it). There is valuable data at your fingertips which will help you refine strategies and increase traffic, conversions and impressions.

So what are you waiting for? Go dig in!

Device Targeting

First, you’re going to want to define the devices that you want to target.  For you this may or may not include tablets as well.  In my opinion, the tablet is more like a laptop or desktop than a mobile device and I think people use it more as a second screen than as a true mobile on-the-go sole device.  Time of day is also a large driver of that opinion I just mentioned though so take that into account.  You’ll need to decide whether you’re just targeting smartphones or if you also want to include tablets in that same audience.  You can also target more specific device makes and models depending upon whether you’re running an Adwords or a Bing Ads campaign.  Let’s match up some of these advanced targeting options.

Adwords lets you target

• Operating System
• Device Models
• Carriers & Wi-Fi Networks

Bing Ads lets you target

Keyword Targeting

When people are on a mobile device they aren’t using the same types of keywords that they use when they are on their laptop or desktop.  A lot of times they use shorter search queries because they aren’t using their thumbs to appease your long tail keyword strategy.  I know, I wish they would too…  Your keyword strategy may need to be more towards your head terms than your long tail terms.  Also, your negative keyword strategy might not help you as much as you’d hope because the more terms people use the more they explain their search intent.  We use this to optimize our campaigns using negative keywords to exclude searches we don’t want, but with less words we don’t get as much intent.

Let’s throw a new twist in here.  What if your products or service cater directly to the mobile search audience.  Do you sell cell phone accessories, and what if they’re just for a device like the iPhone?  Are you the company behind a new app or mobile game that you’re trying to market?  You may have an entirely different keyword strategy for your mobile campaigns than your other campaigns.  This may also help you target just the specific devices that you’re looking for.

Ad Copy Optimization

Another thing you should be evaluating is your ad copy.  Your ads should be saying something different to a mobile phone user than someone on a laptop or desktop.  The biggest difference in my ad copy that I’ve seen is our call to action and the use of ad extensions to attract calls and leads.  If you’re running a lead generation campaign then maybe getting a user with a click to call ad is a better experience than sending them to your website, or maybe you’d just rather give them the option.  Depending upon your business you can use Adwords to force a call or give them the option to call or visit your website.  Almost always you’ll want to say something specific to a mobile user giving them a phone based call to action.  Maybe that’s calling your business or downloading your app.  You could also investigate changing your products mobile check out experience to streamline your conversion process for a mobile user.

Enhanced Campaigns

If you haven’t been watching the developments from Adwords on the new Enhanced Campaigns then you will be forced in this direction sooner rather than later.  I’m not even sure that Google could have predicted how important mobile search has become in the last 12 months.  Enhanced campaigns are their effort to make it a bigger focus for everyone.  In their opinion it helps people optimize mobile campaigns more efficiently and at a better scale depending upon the size of your campaigns.  This whole topic has been thrown around the ring with PPC managers taking both sides.  Some people see the benefits and others say that they like their mobile specific campaigns being separate.

In summary, if you haven’t been giving the proper attention and optimization effort to your mobile campaigns then it’s time to reevaluate.  You’re missing out and it’s not like mobile campaigns are a fad that is going to pass.  Evaluate where your budgets are at and your management time should emulate the type of spread between where your budgets and ultimately your performance is coming from.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely an advocate for a big social presence, but there are limitations. Many businesses don’t need to be on Linkedin. There, I said it. Now, gather around and I’ll tell you why.

With most social media, the effort and time you put into it is indicative of the results you will inevitably see from it. However, with Linkedin, the effort and level of results does not stop with the person posting on the company profile, it’s the whole team effort of the employees that make your presence there a valid tool or a complete waste of resources. That’s what sets it apart.

If you want your company to be involved on Linkedin, not merely as a passive content distributor, your employees need to be engaged on the site. This is especially crucial if your company is B2B, but salespeople and most employees of any company on the site should be versed in Linkedin and be using it on a daily basis, acting as advocates for their company by sharing company updates, engaging in group discussions, etc.

Not only is it a fantastic networking resource, but Linkedin can also be a place to share newsworthy company updates. I think of it an extension of your company’s ‘newsroom’ where you can funnel PR updates, product launches, management transitions, employment opportunities, etc, giving them a wider audience than their usual static reach of the News section of your site and press releases most people will never read.

However, it should by no means be seen as a content dumping ground from the posts you are broadcasting on other social networks. That post you just made about spring cleaning tips is perfectly fine for Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, but is most likely not appropriate for Linkedin. This can go both ways, as the industry jargon-filled report you just posted to start a discussion on Linkedin may fall flat with your Facebook fans as the audience may be completely different: employees and industry peers vs. consumers.

Oftentimes, people who are encapsulated on a daily basis with their industry and company have a distorted view of what is important and interesting to them and what is actually interesting or social-friendly and appropriate for social media. Not every move your company makes should be broadcasted on social media, but Linkedin is a more appropriate arena than most for company updates.

To reiterate my main point from earlier, Linkedin success goes beyond company profile updates sharing your latest blog post. To truly benefit from this unique site, your employees need to be active on it, sharing and conversing: building relationships.

To benefit from Linkedin, your company needs to do the following:

- Post regularly about company updates, industry news, etc.

- Completely fill out and optimize your company’s profile with products/services, design elements and more.

- Employees connect with your company profile and utilize the site to network, recruit, engage in industry discussions, etc.

Remember, don’t feel like your company has to spread itself too thin throughout all the different social media sites. Excel at a few, and forget the rest, rather than weigh yourself down in mediocrity with a pervasive and overwhelming, but ultimately milquetoast presence.

How are people in your industry using this powerful networking tool? Tell us in the comments below.

But before we go any further, you’re probably wondering what exactly content marketing is! That is a great question. *By definition, content marketing is a marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers. Content marketing’s basic premise is to “provide some valuable information or entertainment – “content” – that stops short of a direct sales pitch or call to action, but which seeks to positively influence customers in some way. In layman’s terms, content marketing is the form of communicating with your target audience in a way where you deliver information that is educational in nature and helps them to make a more informed decision. Instead of selling, you’re helping your target audience become more intelligent.

Now that we have established the definition of content marketing, what exactly are forms of content marketing? Another great question! Some forms of content marketing include but are not limited to social media (Facebook, Linkedin, Google Plus), eNewsletters, articles, blogs, press releases,
and more. All of these mediums can be used to reach out to target audiences and be used to build trust, educate, interact with customers, or drive conversions. As I mentioned above, content marketing is not about pitching your products, but more so about educating your target audience in effort to help them make a more informed buying decision.

Content marketing is an effective way to get your message in front of your target audience while persuading them to take action. And, I firmly believe that as more households continue to become multi-screen households (televisions, computers, tablets/smartphones), traditional advertisement will become less and less effective. I say this because consumers have become so immune to traditional advertisements that they do not even notice them or they scan right over them. For example, Internet users typically look right past Internet banner ads while “surfing,” television viewers can fast forward past commercials with DVR, making each of these advertising vehicles less effective as time goes on. You’re probably wondering how I know this. Well, a few years ago, I decided to take a sabbatical from internet marketing and try my hand at selling broadcast television advertising. It was there that I learned how television viewers watch television and what objections advertisers had about television advertising. And it was a very hard gig.

I am also a firm believer that if businesses utilize content marketing and marry it with other digital marketing efforts, they would see outstanding results (again, personal view). Why? Because content marketing is a vehicle where you can offer value to customers and clients with a consistent message of education and persuasion, which in return would ultimately reward your content marketing efforts by them becoming loyal patrons of your business or establishment.

You’re probably wondering by now if I am going to offer any tips that can help you develop a content marketing strategy. Well, below are some tips to help you develop a successful content marketing strategy.

• Relevant, Ability to Share & Reusable: Develop content so it can be re-purposed down the road. The “blast and forget it” approach is not always the right approach. By giving your content a longer shelf life, you can help improve marketing efficiencies down the road. I want to mention that I am not recommending that you re-purpose the title and edit a few sentences. I am recommending that you use the same template, opening and closing paragraphs, and drop the new content in the middle.
• Context of Content: Understand your target audience and deliver your message according to their interests. Develop a message that is going to resonate with them and prompt them to take action. Content and understanding your target audience is crucial to the success of your content marketing.
• Adaptive: Again, make sure your content is consistent among all devices, as well provides the same user experience between computers, tablets, and smartphones.
• Social Engagement: While developing your content, it’s important to ensure that your content is “social friendly” and it allows users to consume it, engage with it, and share it. This can help build and improve your social footprints.

I would like to leave you with this last thought before I jet. Content marketing will only continue to morph into a larger component of digital marketing and it’s important that you develop a content marketing strategy should you not have one.

*Definition courtesy of Wikipedia

With the surge of mobile internet usage over the past few years has naturally come exponential growth in mobile search. It’s certainly no surprise that mobile users typically search differently than desktop, but valuable data is surfacing that may leave many unprepared companies struggling to get found and keep users from bouncing off their unoptimized sites.

The latest data comes directly from Google, with their Mobile Search Moments: Understanding How Mobile Drives Conversions data released as part of an infographic last week.

One of the biggest takeaways from these statistics is that mobile searchers, in addition to being on-the-go, are ready to act, with 3 out of 4 mobile searches triggering some sort of follow-up action.

This transition to mobile has made the need for mobile optimized sites more important than ever before. Rather than the typical separate site, subdomain approach, the best approach is responsive design. For those that are unfamiliar with responsive design, it basically means that the elements on your page shift and adjust to your screen size. At a certain screen size, your navigation menu will completely change into a mobile-friendly drop-down menu.

If you’re curious to see a responsive design site in action, head over to Smashing Magazine’s site on your desktop browser. Now, play with the size of your browser window and notice the different layouts at desktop size, tablet size and smartphone size.

So, other than making your site look good on mobile devices, what does responsive design have to do with mobile search? Well, the other benefit of responsive design is that you maintain a single site. When you change the content on a page, it changes the content on the desktop, tablet and smartphone version of the page because they are one in the same.

This means that all of the on-page relevance and links you build to a single page now benefit you in mobile search as well, instead of trying to build links to get your mobile site to rank.

Lastly, mobile-friendly sites are what searches have come to expect. Study your analytics. What percentage of your visitors are from mobile devices? How does that compare to last year? What is the engagement (bounce rate, average time on site, pages per visit, etc.) of your mobile visitors vs. desktop users?

These trends are almost guaranteed to continue. Smartphones are getting more advanced, more people are getting them, and people are essentially carrying your website in their pockets. The question is: when they search for you, are you ready to be found?

Rules Of Thumb To Help

There are a few different guidelines that you can use to help determine when you should be making a new ad group or just adding a few different keywords to an established ad group:

• Use a 2 root words guide.
• Try to not have more than 20-25 keywords in a single ad group.
• Different types of keywords that show different intent.

To help explain more about some of these guidelines I’ll use a few different examples.  Let’s say you’re making a campaign to advertise your ppc management services.  You may have a list of terms that include: ppc management, ppc management company, ppc management services, search marketing management, search marketing manager, google adwords management, google adwords management services, etc.  Your ad group list should at least include 3 different ad groups with this small list:

• ppc management
• search marketing management
• google adwords management

When you’re using more than 20-25+ keywords in an ad group you may have a specific reason you need that many keywords, but for most ad groups this seems like there could be further segmentation.  Maybe you’re taking over a campaign for someone, acquired a new client or maybe it’s just time to re-review your ad group structure.  Whatever reason it is I believe your entire campaign could benefit from this exercise.  If there are more than 25 keywords in a single ad group it’s hard to believe that all those different searchers should be seeing the same set of ads, which is why it might be time to build some new ad groups and write some new ads.

There are a lot of ways that people search the internet to find an infinite amount of different things.  This also means that we cannot think of all these searchers as the same.  Some searchers are just looking for information, while others are looking for that product that your site sells.  Professionals in search marketing have tried to group keyword searches into 3 different groups.

• Informational
• Navigational
• Transactional

This is a good way to think about your keyword and where these people are within your sales funnel, or are they in your sales funnel at all?  Based on the intention of the searcher you should have different ad groups with terms that have totally different ad copy which speak to that searcher on an individual level.  If it’s an informational keyword then your ad needs to answer the question or promise more insight into what problem they’re looking to solve.  If the keyword is navigational then your ad needs to direct that searcher to their destination.  Lastly, if the search is transactional then your ad should grab their attention and offer them the product or service that you’re selling and close the deal.

Whether you’re a seasoned PPC manager or just starting out this exercise of segmenting or adding to your ad group list is a great optimization technique.  Don’t get caught up in adding keywords over time to your existing ad groups to gain traffic and exposure be left with a small number of ad groups that all have hundreds of keywords in them.  Your campaigns and business are going to suffer.  Take the extra time to do it right.

You also have to look at what you deem as having value to your organization. If you see your audience, followers, comments, “retweets” are growing, and your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube/Vimeo, Linkedin and Instagram are all growing in numbers and in some cases driving people to your website, then it’s valuable and driving awareness. More than likely, you will find a few of them are not worth any direct time investment.

True, social media doesn’t allow you to measure it as closely as other Internet marketing pieces such as banner ads, Pay-Per-Click, or email marketing, but you can track direct leads and/or sales from each social media medium you use – if that is what you need to make sure the time, money, effort you spend on it is worth it.  One key piece…don’t be lazy.  Don’t just use a feeder system (like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite) that cuts off posts or uses hashtags where it’s not appropriate. Dedicated users will know you did not intend that message for that medium and it can lose some impact.

You also have to find what works for your organization – every business is different based on size, geography, client demographics, etc. You need to watch the data and optimize for what works specifically for your business.  We can tell you – just a bunch of self-promotion is NOT going to generate social media strategy that will maximize the efforts you are putting into it and there is no “cookie cutter” solution that will maximize results.

Social media also allows people to use the Internet on their terms.  They may never leave Pinterest or Facebook until they are ready to transact.  If you aren’t there in that space, you could be missing 10-20% of your desired audience that didn’t know about you because you weren’t there and part of “their conversation.” If you could get 10% more sales from having a solid strategy here, that could be a lot of growth – but it won’t happen overnight.

The ultimate goal is to get a post in front of thousands through their networks – through the use of tagging, timely posts, and community/industry cross promotion. Marketing is the sum of all parts and the number of touch-points – something known as frequency – the number of times someone has to be exposed to something before they are willing to take an action.  Through social media, you can increase those touch-points and be in front of them more often, which helps speed up the frequency time-period until an action will occur.

With an agency/resource who can monitor and report on social media for you (and also bring some creativity to your strategy), it can be the most effective $500-$1,500 a month (local-to-national type budgets) you spend out of your marketing budget and go a heck of a lot further than any advertising dollar could with reach.  Just make sure you give it a few months and your resource for this is showing you the data and how it is moving in the right direction on the way there.  Happy posting…

As I previously mentioned, the addition of the Search Funnels data columns will help project managers to make more informed decision based on actionable data, allowing them to optimize your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads accordingly. And if you’re anything like me, you’re probably experiencing that warm and fuzzy feeling right now. After all, these metrics existed before day, but they were hard to incorporate into your campaigns.

Whether you’re a novice or veteran Google AdWords project manager, here are some tips on how to optimize your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ad text based on the new Search Funnels data.

Take a look at your keyword report and identify the keywords that have a high assisting conversions number with a low click-through-rate and try moving those keywords into their own ad groups with dedicated ad text.  By segmenting these keywords into their own ad groups with dedicated text, you will be able to improve quality scores, user experiences per keyword, and help lower your overall CPC per keyword.

Within the same keyword report, identify the “assist keywords” that have resulted in a conversion, review their performance, CPC, and determine if you should adjust the max CPC to warrant more conversions. Even though these keywords have assisted in a conversion, it is possible that you are missing out on valuable conversions because your “assist keyword” average position is too low. Remember, these keywords help in the conversion cycle and you should optimize them accordingly.

Lastly, you should enable the “assist impressions” and this will give you insight into how your ads are performing.  As project managers, we typically gauge the effectiveness of an ad by measuring the ad’s CTR and conversions (if available).  By reviewing the “assist impressions” data metric, you will be able to determine if your ad is under-performing by seeing if your ads have a high “assist impressions” and a low amount of clicks. And if this is the case, you will probably want to revise your ad copy to help build the relevancy between the search query and ad copy, as well as adding stronger call-to-actions to help improve your CTR. You may also want to raise your keyword bid to raise your ad position to warrant more clicks and reduce your high “assist impressions.”

There you have it. There are some tips and tricks to help improve your Google AdWords campaigns by utilizing the new “Search Funnels” data metrics available within the AdWords interface.

Optimizing your blog posts for social media is not only good for your exposure and reach but can benefit you when it comes to search ranking. Search engine algorithms factor in social indicators, favoring content that receives a lot of attention on social profiles. Plus, the more your content is shared, the more traffic is driven back to your blog, which may contribute to boosting your site’s ranking, and provide a gateway to your reader’s turning into leads.

Tips for Writing Social-Friendly Blog Posts:

Think social with your content – Before you even start writing your blog post, think about how it will look, and be received on social media. What do you like seeing on your Facebook Newsfeed? What are you more likely to share? Think of a social audience when composing your posts and how you can start a conversation around your topic.

While you’re writing, it also doesn’t hurt to think of a particularly catchy phrase or angle that you can use as the teaser or status for promoting the post on social media.

Thumbnails, Meta Descriptions & More - There’s nothing worse than the sinking feeling social media managers get when they find amazing content, go to post the link on a social network, only to discover that the thumbnail doesn’t match the content, or worse yet, there’s no thumbnail at all, making it a very aesthetically unappealing post.

A general rule of blogging is to that you should always add some sort of visual in the post to keep people’s interest. Now there’s the added advantage of having a relevant thumbnail in link previews for Facebook, Google+, Linkedin etc. that will be more enticing than if you simply had the Blogger or WordPress logo as the default thumbnail on the post.

Remember that on social networks you’re essentially fighting against many different factors to get people to actually see your post, let alone pause their scrolling and take in what you have to say and share or interact. A compelling thumbnail, nicely worded meta description and title are all simple tactics that can have an impact on people stopping to take in your content and will show that you take care in what you’re sharing, making people more likely to pass it along.

Pinterest adds another incentive to feature strong visuals in your blog posts,since Pinterest posts are all about photos and graphics. If you don’t have a photo or video in your blog, then Pinterest won’t pick up anything that it can use to ‘pin’ the link to, rendering the post unusable for the site.

Social Outreach - When it’s appropriate, to further the conversation your blog has started, promote a Twitter hashtag at the end of your post. Make it concise, the shorter the better, to allow for more characters in the user’s post. People are going to share your blog on Twitter anyways, wouldn’t you like to be able to put forth your own hashtag for people to use, so you can search for it and monitor what people are saying? This also allows you to join in on the Twitter conversation, start discussions, thank people for sharing your blog, and retweet their own Tweets mentioning your blog post.

In general your blog should feature a social media call-to-action, icons and/or follow widgets to promote your social sites. You should also have a plugin that facilitates social sharing for your blog posts, such as WordPress’s ShareThis to easily allow your readers to post your content.

Tips for Sharing Your Blog on Social Media:

Don’t be an auto-posting robot! - People don’t like automated messages, whether it’s an election-time robo-call or a plug-in pushed post from your blog to your Twitter or Facebook. It looks lazy, unoriginal and will likely decrease the amount of people who interact with the post or even click-through to your content, which is the whole point of sharing your posts on social media!

Test it out – Before hitting ‘post’ take a look at the link preview that pops up when you copy and paste the link into a Facebook, Google+, Linkedin status field. This allows you to see how your link will look once it’s posted, so you can doublecheck important aspects like meta description, thumbnail and title errors (html code replacing punctuation).

Be a tease – A common mistake is bogging your social post down with all the important information featured in the blog. You want to give people an incentive for clicking through to your post, not gain everything they needed to know just by scanning your post in their Newsfeed.

In the same vein, avoid simply rehashing the title of your blog in the status promoting the blog. People will see the title in the link preview; writing it in the status content is redundant. Twitter is the exception to this rule, since you should be shrinking the link to make more room for the written part of your post that should be enticing your followers to click through to the link.

Prioritize for the most compelling post - Sometimes you may want to let your actual blog link take a backseat in a social media post. If an image or video that you feature in the blog is more compelling and more likely to draw in people to the post, then you should have that be the main part of the post. Shorten the blog link using a tool like bit.ly and insert it at the end of your written status with a call-to-action to gain maximum click-throughs, i.e. “Learn more: [shortened link].” Check out the image for a good example of this method of social posting.

Social media should be a crucial part of your blogging strategy: Writing interesting content with a social audience in mind, content that people will want to socially endorse by sharing. Doing this and leveraging your own social networks for content distribution can grow your blog’s readership, boost exposure and give posts a longer shelf-life.